I’ve started cooking properly again in the past few weeks, for the first time since about January. Actually taken the time and effort to chop and plan and watch this dish cooking, I mean, rather than just shoving stuff in the oven and then removing twenty minutes later. It’s tasted better than any food i’ve had in months, too.

Since exams finished, you see, I lost my appetite. Maybe it’s that, while revising, I turned eating into a chore – something that I needed to do, but something that distracted from all the stuff I had to get into my head. Maybe it’s just that i’ve been eating the same foods for so long, and so they’ve picked up some residual connection with exams. For some reason, though, I just haven’t been enjoying food. It’s been hard work. And so the other night was something of a breakthrough, really, a testament to the power of rediscovery and a reclaiming of good, God-given joy.

On some level, it works the same for Scripture too. At 10am this morning I was sitting in Caffe Nero staring at three different translations of Psalm 23, and with literally nothing to say about them. Psalm 23 is an astonishing piece of poetry, but it’s also become part of the cultural lexicon, and trying to read it I found myself desperately searching for some ‘new angle’, banging up against fragments of sermons and songs and opinions in the process, and trying to impress… someone, I don’t know who.

Maybe it was God I was trying impress (I know, I know, I’m an idiot). Maybe it was myself. Maybe it was you, whoever you are, reading this. Whatever; the fact of the matter is, it wasn’t working.

Rediscovery doesn’t necessarily come in new perspectives (that, by the way, is how we get the feminist Jesus, the mythical Jesus, or all kinds of other hypothetical Saviours); it comes in remembering, in re-experiencing something that originally took your breath away. Psalm 23, that used to take my breath away, as did “Tom’s Amazing Bagel Burger” – it’s worthy of the title, by the way – but over time both got stale, predictable, became a method of looking clever and so got stripped of all their joy. It’s entirely possible, it turns out, to reinvent things without the slightest hint of awe or wonder, just as it’s possible to be reinvigorated about something without changing a thing about it.

When I got back into the kitchen the other day, the end product wasn’t particularly amazing, but the process of making the thing reminded me of the joy of being able to put something like that together and how great a gift that kind of food and provision really is. Simply by taking the effort to make my own food rather than buying it ready-made from Sainsbury’s, it suddenly seemed to taste better – and not just because it wasn’t a ready-meal…

The same goes for Psalm 23. Sure, it’s possible to look at it through the perspectives of others, but at the same time that’s almost like ‘ready-meal Christianity’; the same final product, but without any of the effort. It wasn’t until I stopped looking academically, stopped trying to look clever and find the ‘new angle’ – in short, stopped trying to write an essay – that any of it regained its vibrancy, its power. And make no mistake, it is powerful. Try re-writing that Psalm in your own words, take the time to meditate on it, and you’ll see what I mean.

When life seems dull, it’s understandable that phrases like “He makes me lie down in green pastures”, “He leads me besides quiet waters” and “He refreshes my soul” lose their power, as we stop identifying with them. Instead of seeing this poem as an expression of awe or seeking similar experiences, then, it’s easier to turn it into a study, to ask pre-conceived questions like ‘what does this passage tell us about our evangelism?’ or what it says about David’s relationship with God – not bad questions, in the right context, but also methods of distancing us from what’s in front of us. The trick is in learning to look closer; to turn study into praise. Psalm 19, another David Psalm, opens in one translation with the words “the heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands… they have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world…” All praise ends up being the result of study directed in its proper context, but it’s disturbingly easy to forget that context…

That’s not to suggest in the slightest that the only purpose that the Psalms possess is in modelling an exemplary process; as anyone who’s read these Psalms searching for wisdom or for a revelation of God’s character will tell you, there’s something eternally, profoundly powerful about these words. But they do tell of the need to seek in order to really understand – to not just accept that “the heavens declare the glory of God” as though that were something normal, but to take the time to see what David meant, and in doing so, start to read Scripture – and nature – with wonder again.

“The heavens declare the glory of God.” You must have seen a sky that reminds you of that fact, and that points beyond itself to the God who made it. Was it that image that came you mind when you read those words, though? It wasn’t mine.

Having started to cook properly again, I’m tired of ‘ready-meal’ food, even if it is easier and so allows me to spend more time doing other stuff. I’m just as tired of ‘ready-meal’ Christianity, too, something that requires no real time or energy, just a simple, twenty-minute sermon dug out of the freezer out of some sense of necessity. That’s not the point, and, ultimately, that doesn’t give me the sustenance I need. It just serves to make Scripture, Christianity – this life – a chore, and that was never the way it was supposed to be.

Here’s to an end to ‘ready-meal’ Christianity, then.

Let’s face it, it was never all that good for us anyway…

A number of my friends have finished their final exams in the past few days, and it’s always interesting watching the way in which people choose to react to this event. Broadly speaking, they tend to fall into one of two camps: those who want to get wasted, and those who want to sleep for a long, long time. Both are ways of blocking out the stress of what has gone before, and it’s understandable: few things i’ve experienced this far have been as traumatic as the finals period.

The morning after, people generally wake up and resolve to do all the things that they’ve not been able to do over the past months; eat decent food, go to the cinema, drink, sleep, play Xbox, whatever. I was the same, and it’s not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with any of these things – they’re blessings from God, and we’re fortunate to have the space to enjoy them. It’s telling, though, that our response frequently involves a retreat into comfort and luxuriance. I’ve currently had nothing to do for the past two and a half weeks, and so have built up a cosy culture of luxury that cushions me fairly well, all in the awareness that I apparently ‘need it’; given that I’m going out into the ‘real world’ soon, I will never get such a sustained period of rest ever again.

The problem with that culture of luxury is that it is profoundly, profoundly unsatisfying. There’s a reason why so many people feel directionless, even depressed, post-finals; in the tough times we end up idealising comfort, stability, luxury, and then when they eventually come, we end up feeling disconnected. We argue that selfishness, self-indulgence, will make us happy, and when we get it it’s awkward to admit that it just isn’t that much fun…

This is the great lie of a culture that argues that the individual is king. Isolation doesn’t eventually hold up. It’s lonely. It’s unsatisfying. It’s purposeless.

It’s not, in short, the way we were created to be.

There’s a reason why the Bible keeps bringing us back to the command to ‘remember’ – among many, many others, too long and too nuanced to detail here, see Deuteronomy 10-12, Isaiah 58, Micah 3-7, Habbakuk 2; see Paul’s teaching on ‘Macedonian Grace’ in 2 Corinthians 8, James’s letter, especially chapter 2; not to mention basically everything that Jesus does. This God is a God of remembrance. There’s a reason, too, why He keeps referring to Himself in the Old Testament as “the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob”; because these stories mean something, tell us something about God’s character, and it is important that God’s character is remembered again and again. There’s a reason why we are told to remember the widow, the orphan, the fatherless.

It’s because it is so easy to forget them entirely, to live in a culture of disconnection where we accept that bad things happen elsewhere and that’s sad, but we have to get on with surviving our own lives, which are hard enough as it is. As a Western church we have so many issues – with self-image, with lack of faith, with infighting and cliques, with whatever you or your church struggle with – and the reason, on some level, at least, is that we forgot. We decided that discipleship, maintenance, those were the important things, and that we needed to be ‘complete’ before we could go. We looked inwards, and not outwards…

We did just what we were told not to do, and the terrifying thing is, I’m about to do it now. Last night our student body handed out £5 notes, asking us to double that money in giving to one of two organisations, Tearfund or Heifer International. This is the morning after, and I’m in a Caffe Nero, having spent £6.50 on a new pad of paper, journal and ink cartridges and £2.10 on a cup of coffee. This isn’t the first time, either. I guarantee that I have spent over £20 on coffee alone in the past two weeks.

I have two £5 notes that were given to me, free of charge, sitting in the back of my Bible, and I’m already starting to forget the poor. It’s that easy.

Do you ever wonder why we feel so inadequate, so frightened, so selfish? Do you ever hide your bank balance when you go to a cashpoint as you don’t like to see how much you spent in the last week? Do you carry your ipod around with you everywhere you go as a way of blocking out the world around (even if you do that by playing worship music)?

I do.

And I think I know why, too. It’s because things are not right, and we – I – am scared of looking at it too closely, as that demands big questions, about this world and my place in it. I didn’t hear birds sing in three months. How’s that for disconnection?

I don’t say any of these things lightly, as they’re not easy things to say. I don’t have any real answers, either. Maybe that’s where we have to start dreaming. Try starting reading books of investigative journalism, even if they’re flawed, and start engaging. If you’ve not read them yet, read Naomi Klein’s No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. Read books like Wikinomics or Affluenza alongside your bible. Read blogs. Visit demotix, and make it a regular website on your list. Sign up to the 24-7 prayer twitter feed, blog, or youtube updates. Get informed, and then act. Pray, and then go.

Pray for wisdom as to where to act, where your God-given passions are, what screams to you as being wrong or unjust, and then pursue that. Pray for your friends; that they too will get passionate, and if they’re not Christians, pray for God to speak to them through this, that they will see the desperate need for God’s power to change things and come to know Him through that. Pray for enlightened eyes, anything, anything that stops us from being disconnected.

Give, sacrificially, of your time, of your money, of your prayer, of your conversation, until it costs. Some of our reasons for not talking about this are that ‘we just need to get through the day’. That’s fair. We can’t talk about this non-stop, no matter what you may think, and we shouldn’t be, either. But we need to be talking more, thinking more, dreaming more. We need God to transform us, and now’s as good a time as any to ask.

This shouldn’t be a faith that’s standing still. Yes, we were saved by grace alone, and it is on that fact that we are grounded, but we explain the need for transformation in our social interactions, our priorities, our sexual ethics, our morality, both out of the need to be examples to others and as a part of becoming more like God. The time is going to come when we’re going to need to be transformed in this area, too. We need to be.

Rob Bell’s flawed (but nonetheless excellent) book Jesus Wants to Save Christians, which also addresses this issue, ends with the conclusion that “this isn’t just about trying to save the world. It’s about saving ourselves. From the kingdom of comfort. From the priority of preservation. From the empire of indifference. From an exile of irrelevance.” On this, he’s right. And I don’t have many answers to any of this, but I do know this, and it scares me – something has to change.

I can’t go on like this, and neither can Christianity. It shouldn’t, and it mustn’t.

Pray with me. Now. Breathe, stop, turn away from the monitor, and pray.

I don’t know what you’ll say – that’s between you and God – but it could go something like this:

Lord God, praise You that You are good; that justice is in Your very nature; that it is only because of You that I am sitting here today at all.
Open my eyes; where I am blind, teach me to see; where I have followed along with the culture, give me wisdom to know how to act.
Equip me to speak, to act, and to pray. Shape me into Your image; teach me to carry Your message and Your love into this world.
This is hard, and I cannot do it alone. Show me what you have called me to. Give me the courage to go.
For the glory of Your name, now and forever.
Amen.

And I don’t know where next. I don’t. I’m paralysed by a sense of the magnitude of the problem, and my own inadequacy. But I do know that something has to change, and this is as good a time as any to start.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked,” is how the gospel of Luke puts it.

That’s us.

So what are we going to do?